


Choco

by Meztli



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Real World, F/M, Fluff, and Chi-Chi is still ChiChi, and they both get help from unlikely sources, in which Goku is still somewhat clueless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meztli/pseuds/Meztli
Summary: It's Valentine's Day and Goku doesn't quite know what that means, but is soon to find out.





	Choco

There’s already a small collection of boxed and bagged sweets arranged untidily on his desk, some of which ChiChi suspects are home-made. Well that’s just… fine. ChiChi half expected that to be the case when she decided to insinuate her feelings with _honmei_ _choco_ she prepared just for him.  

But she does have some competition.

In the few months since transferring to their school from somewhere deep in the mountains, Goku has managed to unwittingly amass no small number of admirers due to a blessed combination of an incredible physique, gorgeous features, and a natural charm and innocence abounding from him that make the students of Fry Pan High either resent or adore him, if not harbor both those sentiments as two halves of a whole.

He’s also gained a reputation for being unbelievably dense and unrefined, yet that evidently hasn’t deterred all the fangirls from gifting him with enough confectionary treats to drill a cavity into his perfect teeth.  

However, what gives ChiChi hope at a chance with the school’s most coveted male is that, unlike with the other girls who follow and surround and occasionally stalk him around the skid-streaked halls and the paved courts outside the building, ChiChi has spent time with him.

She’s helped him study and he’s given her pointers in martial arts training and they get along so well that there are times she forgets they are not dating and are just really good friends.

Maybe today will change that, or at least make a budge in this frustratingly slow process. 

Her hands tighten around the carefully packaged sweets she holds in her clammy hands as his eyes catch her approaching form and she has to remind herself to not to hold on so tight or she’ll  crumple the box. His smile- it’s just so disarming every time she sees it, and it’s hard not to fall victim to the way his mouth curves to the side and lends him a roguish touch and yet maintain an overall boyish effect, and it’s also hard to forget that it’s a smile that he bestows on almost everyone, because he’s the kind of person who gives them freely even when they don’t deserve it.

Meanwhile her heart is doing some kind of wild dance,  out of step and nervous yet happy all the same, but it loses its footing and slips to a fall when the curve of his mouth melts like chocolate laid out in summer heat.

“Is that candy?” He asks, his handsome face twisting into barely concealed distaste. It sends a heavy rock down her throat and traveling achingly into the pit of her stomach. She wants to deny it now, to turn away and pretend like it’s for someone else, but he reads the tag that says “For Goku” and watches in silent dismay how his frown deepens.

“Yeah,” she says and, because she doesn’t think that her next words will truly have consequences and she can’t think of better words to choose while her mind is racing, adds tightly, “But if you don’t want them you don’t have to take them.”

He actually breathes a shallow sigh of relief and says without an ounce of remorse or sarcasm, “Why don’t you give them to Oolong? I don’t think he’s gotten any candies yet.” He indicates towards the back of the room with a nod of his head, to where a homely chubby boy with a pig-nose sits, staring questioningly at them.

It’s not hard to drown out the murmurs when they’re being drowned out by the blood rushing in her ears.

It’s probably not a big deal, she tells herself as her vision blurs and she does everything in her power to keep her eyes from leaking.

On her way out, she tosses the box into the trash can, along with her hopes and other pieces of stuff from inside her chest.

 

She’s not the only one hiding in the damp confines of girl’s locker room. A smoky sweet smell is emanating from one of the stalls in the bathroom, and when the girl emerges holding a lit cigarette between her slender pale fingers, she takes a drag while her arctic blue eyes regard her through a puff of smoke. “Never expected to find _you_ playing hooky of all people. Ah well, I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Though she speaks the language well she has a thick accent, European…. Russian to be specific. Not that ChiChi is an expert in what Russian accents sound like, she only knows it’s Russian because everyone knows the Russian twins, the only foreign exchange students they have and probably have ever had in the history of the school.  No one is sure why they would go to their little school of all places, but there are rumors that they’re here on asylum on account of their father being a wanted fugitive of the Russian government.

Even without that crazy implausible backstory, the girl is intimidating both in beauty and demeanor.

“Does this have anything to do with Valentine’s Day?” Lazuli- she recalls her name- asks her as she takes another casual pull of her cigarette.

ChiChi came here to be alone for a while and gather her thoughts, and while she’s done well in fighting off tears save for a few that escaped her on her way here, she still doesn’t want to be seen like this, looking cross and sullen and defeated.

Lazuli’s tone is so cool it’s devoid of any emotion, including judgement. Even her eyes are hard to read, like trying to read blocks of ice.  She doesn’t know or trust her enough to go into details, but she nods her head in affirmation. ChiChi can tell this girl is too astute to be lied to anyway.

“Boys can be stupid,” she says after a short pause. The sizzle the cigarette makes when it hits the damp surface of the water is oddly satisfy. “But some are just dense. You kind of have to chip away at them little by little. This is probably the case for Goku.”

At the mention of his name ChiChi physically jolts, and she looks at Lazuli with her mouth open.

She gives her a small smile, something she’s sure is a rare occurrence if her brief and superficial encounters with the foreign beauty were anything to go by, and it even though it’s just a minute tug of her lips, it softens her face a little and suddenly she isn’t the ice queen that everyone thinks she is.

“Krillin is good friends with him. You’ve come up during his incessant chattering a number of times, more so than anyone else. That’s gotta mean something from a guy who used to refer as sex as ‘that funny dance people do to make babies.”

ChiChi watches her wordlessly as Lazuli rubs oil on her skin to mask the smokey smell. “Are you and Krillin dating?”

Another smile, uncharacteristically tender yet still coquettish. “Something like that.”

 

He waits for her by her assigned locker, holding the box of chocolates she had previously discarded in his hands.

He sighs. There is so much that he doesn’t know, not just in the realm of academia but of the world itself.

When his grandfather passed, he had to leave the sanctity of the mountains and trade the fresh air of the trees to live in a place where the air is dry and the sun beats down on you almost as bad as some of the people do, and not in the fun way that involves sparring. 

They think he’s simple-minded, and maybe he is simple, but he’s not dumb. Things here are just so different from where he was raised and what he’s used to, and while he doesn’t mind learning new things, it can be quite jarring when the truths you were told your whole life turn are said to be lies and the lies you never even knew existed somehow exist.  

During lectures, his mind sometimes goes off daydreaming about his former life, before he had to deal with girls touching him without asking and people laughing at him for missing some universal knowledge they all shared except him, only to be snapped into reality and met with the condescending tone and glare of his sensei as they scold him for “not paying attention.”

Maybe if he had been paying attention he would have known that Valentine’s Day means more than just a day of getting candy and he wouldn’t have unintentionally upset ChiChi like he did earlier.  

 “You didn’t accept chocolates from a hot broad like that? What’s wrong with you?” Oolong had scolded him, his already puffy cheeks getting rounder.

“I don’t like sweets. I told her maybe you’d like them, since you didn’t get any.” He really doesn’t like sweets, and the only reason he had kept the other candy was because some of it was already on his desk or forced on him before he could protest. Still, he wouldn’t have thrown her chocolates away had she insisted.

“Much as I would’ve loved for her to give me that and then some, those chocolates were for you, you fucking dolt. I mean…” he looked him up and down, his eyes widening as if he’d just sprouted a horn on his head or something similarly alarming. “Do you even like women?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“So you don’t like girls. Okay, I think I get it now. Would explain a lot. Could’ve at least let her down easier. Geesh.”

But Goku didn’t get it. Some of the girls who gave him candies also gave them to other guys, so he didn’t understand why it was a big deal.  So he pressed Oolong further, and with several puzzled looks and mocking remarks from Oolong interspersed throughout his explanation, Goku learned about Valentine’s Day and the subtle significance of ChiChi’s chocolates.

 

ChiChi pauses at the sight of him and her surprised gaze lands on the boxed treats, a crinkle in her brow forming as she asks him, “What do you want?”

 “I’m sorry ChiChi, I didn’t know. We don’t have Valentine’s Day back in the mountains. The majority of people there are elders who are either married or widowed. We wouldn’t have a need for one.”

A few students passing down the halls slow their walk or hang just close enough to eavesdrop on them and while Goku isn’t too concerned if they hear them he wonders why any of them would care. 

But that hardly matters as the look on ChiChi’s face softens and her chest expands as she draws in air, an area that Goku’s eyes seem to wander out of their own volition. It’s not that he doesn’t not notice girls- he isn’t blind. But there needs to be something more to them for him to notice. He can’t explain it but, it’s not something that he could see, only feel.

“I forget how isolated you were before,” she says.

“I wouldn’t say I was isolated. I had plenty of company, just not the human kind.”

He’s relieved to hear a breathy chuckle escape from her lungs, a sound he really likes and more so when he’s the one who’s caused it.  

For some reason, a lot of the things ChiChi has or does are made better on her. Like for example he doesn’t think much of the redness that blossoms on some girls’ faces when they talk to him, but on her it looks pretty. And when he gets yelled at it only ever sometimes does something down his spine when she’s the one yelling at him.

 And then there are other things that not many or no one else has that she does have and that he truly admires. Like how her body is made of muscle and yet still looks soft as a peach, or how she’s one of the few people who practices martial arts and is good at it.

“I can take those back if you don’t want them,” she offers, and even though her tone is polite and she is still smiling, they’re not as bright as they were moments before. He’s still getting used to reading women her age, and many times the issue doesn’t lie in picking up their emotions but rather the source of them.

He veers his body around along with chocolates, the _honmei choco_ that are given only to someone you love, as Oolong explained it.

Love? He doesn’t know the feeling outside the context of his home, his grandfather, and the things he enjoys doing. Catching his own fish and cooking it in an open fire, or the smell of wet vegetation after a storm, or the buzz of his muscles during and after a good sparring match. These are things he loves.

If these chocolates mean ChiChi loves him, then it must mean something good. He’s not sure if he would label how he feels about her as love, since all the things that he knows he does love give him a different feeling, in their own individual way, and he supposes that it’s possible it’s the same thing with ChiChi.

He selects one of the candies snuggled in separate pockets of the box and chews, liking the way ChiChi’s face seems to glow as if the sun was hiding in there, exceedingly more so than the taste of the chocolate itself. He supposes he can say that he even loves the way she looks right now.  

He’d like to see it more, and if it takes eating all her chocolates to keep it on her, well then he’d just have to put up with an upset stomach later.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to upload as a chapter in "Bits and Bobs," the collection of one -shots I'm sporadically uploading, but there is a possibility I may continue this story as a collection of high school moments. Let me know what you guys think!


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